


Fairytales and Police Procedurals

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: AU Les Mis, Child Cosette, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Fluff, Found Family, Javert Lives, M/M, au cosette is rescued by javert and valjean, canon era ish, just some fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 18:50:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16561322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: In which Javert and Valjean debate over the best bedtime story for their daughter. Canon era, AU where they adopt Cosette.Fluffy one-shot, based on beautiful art by Invipinx over on tumblr





	Fairytales and Police Procedurals

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [They are Not Stories](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/431204) by Invipinx. 



> Comments are always welcome, especially if you want me to write more Javert/Valjean fluff

The fire crackled, throwing shadows over the small Parisian apartment. It was matched by the light of a single candle, (any more than that would be far too decadent, according to the man who owns the apartment), which sat by a comfortable, simple red chair. The sort of chair purchased by a lifelong bachelor, content to smoke his pipe and read his paper each night.

Tonight would have been the perfect night for such a thing. The grey-white flakes of snow whirled outside, and it was cold enough the Seine was nearly frozen over. If it had been three years ago, a night like this would have found Inspector Javert sitting in that red chair, managing to glower at a paper while smoking his pipe. The room would have been quiet. Even the fire would have crackled less because when he lived alone, he saw no reason for wasting firewood when one could simply put on a second (or third) coat.

But just as the falling snow changed the landscape of Paris that Javert had walked through on his route today, made the windows of Notre Dame glitter in ways that reminded him, almost embarrassingly of the hard candy he’d once been given a as child and made the various skeletal trees along the rues full once more, not with leaves, but feathery-soft decorations of white, Javert’s life too had changed. Although, if you asked him, he’d just say the snow made it easier to track criminals, since their footprints were so easily followed.

But if Valjean, if that impossible man, who had somehow become the most impossible thing of all, a husband to him, (married with their hands on a legal document and their eyes on each other, in the most lawful way Javert could think of doing such a thing), asked, then, just maybe, Javert might give in to at least one of those metaphors about the snow. If the mood was right, and he was looking anywhere but at those very blue eyes his husband had. Those eyes always made it hard to say anything, especially anything as silly as poetry.

Or perhaps he already had shared them.

And that was why, next to the old chair, next to the simple candle, there was a small bowl full of those exact same hard candies. They glittered like gemstones in the candlelight, as lovely as the first time he’d tried one, learning the taste of sweetness after years spent in the cold dark prison his mother had called home. Perhaps he had admitted his fondness for them to Valjean, and that was why the man had bought them.

Or maybe that was just an excuse for a certain impossible husband to hide Javert’s pipe and tobacco. Again.

 

“Father!” a voice cried, cutting through the crackling fire and his own thoughts.  The little girl wore a simple (at Javert’s request) but expensively made (thanks to Vajean’s coin) and decorated with lace in the shape of flowers (by the choice of the girl herself) dress,  as she’d refused to get ready for bed until her other papa was also home for the night. At that point, Javert had built the fire and sat in his chair, bracing for a long night. “You stopped at the very bestest part.”

“Best part, dear. Proper grammar is a sign of sophistication.”

“What’s sop-fish-ta-“

He paused to recite the word a second time, and then when he congratulated her for saying it correctly, he tried to ignore the swell of pride in his heart at both her talent and her warm smile. Only six, and Cosette was beginning to read, a fact which pleased both of her fathers immensely. Because that was really the purpose of the chair now. No longer the solitary domain of a lonely man, it had become the fort of a small child, who reigned over the whole apartment as a mostly-benevolent dictator.

Cosette had dubbed the chair her story-chair, and Javert, though he found fiction a little too frivolous, was too proud of her reading abilities to disagree.

And of course, the stories he told her of hunting criminals and bringing villains to justice, those weren’t stories. Not at all. They were factual statements, narratives to illustrate the danger of crime, and to offer her examples of justice. They featured moments that he himself had lived, or were at least very reputaly recorded documentaries that he'd read from others. Nothing he told her was lurid or sensationalist. None of those en-vogue tales of derring-do, and ghosts. He had, himself, read a translation of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and found it both boring and ridiculous in all the worst ways. Headless horseman. Bah. There were far scarier things in reality than anything some so-called "gothic" writer could dream up. No. Javert stuck to the facts when he he sat in his chair, and Cosette perched next to him, much like the little bird she'd first reminded him of.  She'd been so thin, there at the Thenardier's shoddy-excuse-for-an-inn. So thin, so scared, and yet, so strong. His brave little girl. A bird she might be, but she was no caged canary like those society ladies. No, his Cosette could peck a man's hand if he tried to grab her, or fly far from danger on the horse he'd taught her to ride. 

He'd given her both riding lessons and self-defense lessons, because he was all too aware of the monsters in her past. The same monsters that he knew in his line of work. The ones that were more frightening than any ghost Washington Irving could dream up. Because monsters like Thenardier were real and terrible and all-too-present, even in this perfect life in this little apartment.

“Father. Story.” She commanded, with a voice that would have made any cadet snap to attention. 

He cleared his throat, all his objections about what was a story and what was a narrative falling away. “Ah. Yes. So, as the inspector tracked the murderer through the snow, the bloody footprints easy for him to follow, he was unaware that a second man followed.”

Cosette gasped.

“Quite so,” Javert agreed.

“Then what?” she asked in a soft voice.

“he Whirled! Lashed out with his walking stick, and then—”

The door banged open, with a bluster of cold wind. Javert let out a bit of a shout, but really, he was quite sure that he was merely worried that Cosette would be worried. He hadn’t been frightened. Not at all. Not even if the only shout Cosette gave was “Papa!”

She leaped out of the chair and tackled the snow-covered Jean Valjean. He laughed that deep rumble that always seemed to vibrate underneath Javert’s own bones, warming him better than any fire. Valjean spun their daughter around before setting her lightly on her feet. “Here. Go hang up Papa’s coat. There’s a good girl.”

She raced off, tugging the yellow coat behind her, leaving puddles of snow everywhere on the formerly-clean floor. Valjean’s bushy eyebrows knit together. “I thought we agreed to no scary stories at night.” He sat on the edge of the red chair, looking down at Javert.

“It wasn’t a story. It was a police procedural.”

The look he received spoke volumes. Javert folded his arms over his chest. “I’m informing her of the role of justice in an unfair world.”

Valjean let out a long sigh. “I think she’ll be quite aware of those things, as she ages. We cannot protect her from her past forever, nor ensure a perfect future.”

“I disagree.” Javert set his jaw. “We will ensure…”

“it’s all right to admit you’re worried.”

“I am not.”

“I am.” The two words were spoken so softly, so gently. Javert’s hand reached out, brushed over those knuckles, so callused and scarred underneath the gloves worn by a fine gentleman. Valjean’s hand opened, trapped Javert’s own bony fingers inside an embrace. Neither of them was ever very good at saying much. So this, one small point of contact, one tiny embrace, was everything they needed to say, the answers to all the questions. A reminder to both of them that neither of them were ghosts. Both were alive, both of them in love, despite all the reasons they perhaps should not have been.

Cosette came skipping back into the room. “Papa? Father? Can we finish the story before bed? PLEASE?”

“How about a fairytale?” Valjean suggested. It would have princesses and magic, and end in those sweet, silly words. Happily ever after. Those words that Javert could not believe did not trust, refused to hope for. What sort of a man was he, to deserve a happily ever after?

Even if Javert knew he would fight the very powers of Hell to ensure his daughter was given a happily ever after of her own. He’d do anything to make her life a fairy tale, better than reality. When Fantine had come to the mayor, that was all she’d asked for. A better life. And the Mayor had gone to the Officer, and together, they’d done what they could. It hadn’t been a fairytale. They hadn’t been able to save Fantine and had nearly broken themselves apart when all Valjean’s lies came to light. But, much more like the stories, Javert enjoyed, hard work, and honesty were rewarded. Somehow. He didn’t like thinking too much of the details, because he would have to remember words like leniency and mercy, and those always hurt his head a little bit.

It was much simpler to smile down at his daughter, nestled in his lap, smiling up at her other father.

Well, it had been easy to smile until she said, “Oh no thank you! I do not like fairy tales. They’re boring.  I want to hear more about the murderer! Did his eyes glow red? Or like a cat’s? Or… or… or! I know! He had fangs, long wicked ones! And he could FLY like a bat!”

The two men exchanged glances, utterly astounded. Here they were, both frightened for their daughter, and she delighted in terrifying stories. She would laugh, he realized, without fear of the future. Laugh, and brave all the injustice the world might give her.

They would teach her everything they knew, of compassion and justice, of law and love, and then, she, with all her courage, would find her own happily ever after.


End file.
